Kosmos Kammermusik: Belcea Quartet

Beethoven composed 16 String Quartets, over a period of approximately a quarter century he developed the genre from the succession of Haydn to works reaching far into the future. In Beethoven's Year 2027, the Belcea Quartet and the Quatuor Ébène will perform all Quartettes – not chronologically ordered, but so that different creative phases stand side by side. In this concert, the Belcea Quartet will span from the early B-flat Major Quartet from op. 18, in which Beethoven still bundled six works entirely in Haydn's manner, to the late op. 132. How far he ventured into new territories can already be read in the formalities: This Quartett has not four, but five movements, and the third breaks the frame of absolute music under the title 'Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity' and with clear references to the Protestant Choral tradition.